Manufacturers have said some products can be sufficiently produced locally to meet the demand of the people without relying on imported versions.
Specifically, the pharmaceutical manufacturers in Nigeria have declared that the local industry can produce enough anti-malaria drugs to meet domestic demand.
Their declaration is coming on the heels of the Federal Government’s recent decision to raise the import tariff on medicaments such as anti-malarial and antibiotic, while reviewing the import duty on natured ethyl alcohol for medical, pharmaceutical or scientific purposes from 10 per cent to five per cent.
Many had condemned the policy, saying that it would make anti-malaria drugs to become too expensive for the poor.
But the President of the Pharmaceutical Group of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Mr. Okey Akpa, said Nigerians did not need imported anti-malaria drugs, insisting that the expensive variants were the imported ones.
He said, “Local manufacturers produce enough quality malaria dugs to meet domestic demand and even export. If you check the anti-malaria drugs with high price tags, they are usually the imported ones.”
Akpa, who had led other manufacturers in demanding for a reduction in tariff of essential inputs for pharmaceutical industry, hailed the government’s decision, adding that the problem had never been with availability of drugs to meet local needs but patronage.
He said Nigeria’s earlier way of implementing the ECOWAS Common External Tariff, where a high duty was imposed on some pharmaceutical raw materials while allowing for a zero import duty on finished drugs was capable of raising the cost of production for local manufacturers and making their products uncompetitive against imported drugs.
According to him, manufacturers have to make a lot of sacrifice to produce drugs at affordable prices for Nigerians despite all the challenges they faced.
Malaria has been identified as one of the leading causes of deaths in Nigeria.
According to Global Burden of Disease study, malaria was a leading killer in Nigeria, resulting in 192,284 deaths in 2015. The second and third top causes of death that year were diarrhoeal and HIV/AIDS, killing 143,689 and 131,873, respectively.
Malaria is said to be most prevalent in congested environment populated by the poor and low income earners of the society. They live in dwellings with poor drainage system, dirty and waterlogged surroundings that serve as breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
The poor people in such surroundings are said to find it difficult to invest in protective measures such as good ventilation; mosquito screening, nets and drugs.
Nigerians are therefore of the opinion that raising the import tariff on anti-malaria may lead to more deaths among the poor of the society who may find it difficult to afford the drugs.
Already, anti-malaria drugs, due to the high foreign exchange rate, had seen an increase in prices from between N150 and N250 to N750 and N1500.